We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Yes. They all look smart. Remember, when I was at Radcliffe, "our" Harvard men treacherously went off to Pine Mattress and Wellesley to sleep with bleached blondes. Then they would sheepishly all return and end up marrying one of us. Because, in the end, intelligence is what matters. You want smart children, you marry for brains, not looks. Who knows, somebody might even make some money...

GOD FORBID THE REST OF THE WORLD THINK LIKE THE RETRIEVER AND NO I THINK I WOULD PREFER TO SLEEP WITH SOMEONE I CAN LOOK AT AS WELL AS CONVERSE. YOU SOUND JADED AND FULL OF YOURSELF AND MAYBE THAT IS WHY YOU ENDED UP AT HARVARD WONDER WHAT THE KIDDIES ARE LIKE? YIKES!!!!!!

Believe it our not, I was a babe. No complaints about my appearance or affectionate nature. Never without a beau in all my years undergrad and grad school.

Insecure Harvard undergrads preferred dumber women at first. Plus a certain type prefers sex with people who don't think too much. Eventually, most realized that it was really better to pick a mate who was their intellectual equal, who might potentially have her own career instead of only having designs on spending a husband's money. Interestingly, most Cliffies of my generation chose, as I did, happily to stay home with our children and be full time mothers. We may have been full of ourselves, do you think, MP? But we believed that nobody could raise our kids as well as we could.

My emphasis on intelligence comes from my belief that everything is 90% genetic. So why would you pick a stupid spouse? True, dumber is often happier. I am your original tormented intellectual. We joke that if our family moved into a new town, the shrinks would rejoice and wonder which one of them would be able to put in a new kitchen off our neuroses. My children are good-looking, brilliant and as tormented as their mama, frequenters of shrinks, askers of awkward problem-of-evil questions at church, not at all full of themselves. They are compassionate, curious, loving, and have a sad streak to them.

Perhaps it is all my fault?

I would never in a million years send them to Harvard, but that is because it is so politically correct, Godless, and because I know from my own experience that you can be suicidally depressed there for years on end and fall thru the cracks as long as you keep ponying up the tuition and turning in the occasional brilliant paper. I want a Christian school for my kids that will both inspire and nurture them.

Come on, MP, pax! Bird Dog has snarled at my elitism before. Perhaps my only excuse is that when your Boston Brahmin ancestors have been marrying cousins for generations, you hang on to the only beneficial thread running thru the neuroses. We are all crazy, but boy! Some of us are pretty sharp! I am one of the duds.

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